In Conversation with Cohan | The Irreducible

In today's Backstage Blog, we spoke to Cohan, the lead creative bringing the other-worldly theatrical experience The Irreducible to Explosives Factory next week.

Step into a vivid, otherworldly environment where surfaces ooze, webs breathe and the human shifts between forms. The Irreducible is a visceral performance exploring ‘trans’formation, symbiosis, and the porous boundary between the body, identity and the world around us.   

Q: Welcome to Theatre Works! Tell me about the life The Irreducible has had on its way here.

The Irreducible has found its way to the stage across many years. From 2021 I have been asking myself how I could communicate the state of gender transformation in a way that connects each of us. For a long time I was bogged down in theory - which eventually led me so full circle back to the body. Kind of as a gathering of experiences and realisations. In fact, I came so full circle that the piece is entirely “matter” based and has no words. I say matter - rather than body based - because the objects in the world become extensions of the body. The whole space becomes co-opted into reforming and transforming how the form is perceived.

Q: Blank Space Productions have been praised in the past for raw and visceral storytelling. In what ways is The Irreducible a continuation of this exploration? In what ways is it different entirely?

The Irreducible follows on from a body of work that has always been personal, political and demanded that we interrogate our world from the body as a starting point. 

But this is unlike anything we have made before. It is the first work we have made where the spoken or written word has felt too didactic. Any kind of explanation outside what you are experiencing in your own body is too mediated. Our experiences in the world are both collective and individual - and in this work you cannot skip over your individual response with understanding. You have to feel it, and let it run through your body. 

In many ways, the show mirrors an experience of coming to understand your gender as different to a given one. Except, in reverse. This work takes away the dominant social structure of gender and the clarity of an explanation - then it asks you how you feel in that space. The other difference is that this work is made by a community of gender queer makers. The two cis people on our team of 16 both have trans partners, so there is a very deep investment from everyone to interrogate what they are bringing into the world. It has been a true joy to see the world grow and expand through the eyes of a team that is so personally invested. The experience of this deep investment has lifted the work in ways I never anticipated.

Q: It sounds like you want to transform the Explosives Factory into an unfamiliar world for the audience to step into. With such a huge team of talented creatives, how do you go about making one cohesive world in which all of these ideas play? Or is cohesion something you even pay mind to?

It has been tricky but beautiful! With 16 of us, and one costume designer in Gadigal and another in Warragul there will never be a time we are all in the same room!

There were two developments last year, so a lot of the design ideas were half formed when this team came on board. It has been helpful that each person's jumping off point came from tested and documented “drafts”.

We have been using an online brainstorming tool called Milanote to communicate visually in real time. And that has been absolutely essential to keep a cohesion and flow as designers explore different ideas because it is visually laid out but with the ability to add lots of detail.

We also have the ‘Core Four’ - My producer Kat Glass, SM’s Kara and Floyd Sam Rumpel and myself. We have all just become conduits for the flow of information. It has been wild. So many emails flying around and in person conversations that could get lost - but if one of us knows it - then it all stays on track.

Q: What do you think will surprise audiences about this work?

I would answer that question differently for every audience member I think. I am so interested to see this world through other peoples eyes. What you bring into the room with you is going to carry the biggest narrative for you through our offer. So I just have more questions? What will gender diverse audiences find surprising compared to cis audiences? What surprises the punter that buys a ticket to everything at Theatre Works but doesn’t read the copy? I mean, is it the body? The slime? The small moments of genuine unbalance baked into the work? Is it what we choose to keep in the shadows? I would love to know. 

If you want to tell us, please message us on insta or email through our the Blank Space Productions website.

Q: What has been the most memorable moment in your process so far?

There is not one moment - but many moments of connection. They are the kinds of moments that make up a good life. Small things that lift you up. Like the joy of meeting our Lighting Designer Cale and nerding out on gender theory in our one hour lunch break. Rocking up super late to meet Kara - the world's most organised person, for her to be so generous about it and keep being generous everyday. To spend three days making a giant slug with Mase, who has such an exceptional sense of humour that we laughed even when we got so sleepy it was hard to think. Making Kat cry with laughter during our scenic debrief, who then all got us laughing with them.

Like, there are a few of these moments with everyone on the team. And each of them feels BIG in my body. They are the work as much as what you see on stage.  

---

The Irreducible plays at Explosives Factory April 8 - 25.

Click here to get your tickets!